Rob Schumann: The subject to this tutorial is using sixths intervals in your playing and these can be use to bridge the gap between lead and rhythm playing, but they can also make a great addition to your solo. They can provide you a smoother melodic possibilities and the shapes that we would be looking at are basically having the same fret on string that aren't adjacent so in this case we will either have the seventh fret on the third string and first string like this. That's a major sixth interval or will have a shape that's some like to this where we would have the second finger still on the seventh fret of the third string and the first finger on the sixth fret of the first string. That gives us a minor sixth interval and these are the two intervals we will be working with and that's until you'll hear them in the context of a lick such as this.
And a lot of people are really in the dark as to how to find their shapes and how to work them into the chords that you are using. So we will try to clear some of that up and then we will look at some applications for some licks. In the case that one I just played that's add up E Mixolydian which would be used over an E dominant 7th chord. So we have that chord here, how was that? There are few different ways you can play that and basically the whole key is knowing what chords you are playing over and then what scale you are using to play over that.
So in this case we are over a dominant 7 chord and the scale of choice in that case is mixolydian. So here is the secret to it. If it's E mixolydian, we are going to figure out that scale on both strings that we want to play the sixths interval on. So we were up here on the first strings, so we are starting with an open E and if we spell an E mixolydian, we have E, F# on the second fret, G# on the fourth fret, A on the fifth, B on the seventh, C# on the ninth, D that's the flat seven on the tenth, all the way up to E on the twelfth and we can keep going with that further. Then we find the same scale on the third string. So in this case, we can start with a G# that's the third here on the third string first fret, A on the second fret, B on the fourth, C# on the sixth, D on the seventh, E on the ninth, F# on the eleventh and then back up to G# again on the thirteenth.
And then basically it's just a matter of finding those shapes and memorizing where they are all on the neck of the guitar. So in this case, it's usually is easiest to slide down -- you can either use your second and third finger or third and second switching that way or this way. Usually, it just depends on what kind of mood you are in and in this case, I think I will start with my third finger. So descending the neck with those shapes I am going to start by combining G# and E. So I guess, we have got minor sixth. Then I will slide down and grab F# and D. So I am just finding the positions that are closest on those two strings that we are pairing together. So there is F# and D. I slide my third finger down. Now I am on E and I am going to pair that with C#. In this case I will just use my fourth finger, both on the ninth fret slide down two more, now I am on the seventh fret for D and B. Now I will slide down one more to C# and I will grab A up here on the fifth fret then sliding down to B and G#, then down to A and F# and then finally G# and I can hit the open E.
So for the lick I just played, I am going to slide in and out of those. So you don't have to play them simultaneously all, there are sometimes you know at the end of this lick that actually sounds pretty cool and you hear that all the time, nice feel the music. The nice thing about this is you can even have a little bit of overdrive. But since the interval is fairly wide it's bigger than a fifth, it's a sixth. The overdrive actually won't interact too much between the notes.
So in this case we are sliding up and letting the notes ring together and it's best to use a hybrid picking technique. Put this in your right hand that's where you are using the pick but then using your little finger and ring finger on your right hand to pick the upper notes and that way you have a little bit more independence between your thumb and your fingers.
However, you could just do with the pick as well. But generally it sounds little bit better to use your fingers along with that. So we slide in here and then slide the bottom note down and then grab the next note. That gives us a little bit of that melody and then slide down to the next position, at the next note and then I am going to do that same slide together. So one more time and if you want those exact frets and rhythms you can look at the tab at the beginning of the video. But that works us out on that pair of strings.
Well, we can work it out on lower string as well and so to do that I will do the same thing. I will find my E mixolydian scale on strings two and four to do a lick there as well. So we can start with the second string, that gives us a B, we are going up to C# on the second fret, D on the third, E on the fifth, F# on the seventh, G# on the ninth, A on the tenth, B on the twelfth and then on the fourth string we can grab the open D, the open four, then E on the second, F# on the fourth, G# on the sixth, A on the seventh, B on the ninth, C# on the eleventh and then back to D on the twelfth. And for this, I can use a little bit more of a sort of a claw motion in my right hand to get a little bit more percussive, when you hear this sound quite a bit too. One more time, as soon as I tune it to chock those off a little bit more and to do that I am just laying my right hand back down as I pick that sixth. Now let the last one ring together and so that's also out of that E mixolydian on the next pair of strings. So if you want those exact frets you can refer back to that tab as well.
So as if have gotten through a couple of example using the mixolydian scale. I should also mention that you can really do this in a lot of different context, with any reasons for styles that this would be appropriate for. You can certainly use it with other chords, minor chord for example. We could take the minor scale or the Dorian scale, find those notes on two pairs of strings and also do the same thing. It sounds great in those context as well.
One other possibility is to take the same concept and move it to the lower strings. Our shapes are going to changed, they were somewhere between one and three and two and four. But when we get to some of the lower strings, it's going to changed. When we get to the fifth and third string for example, this will be the shape of my major sixth, I will have a fret difference between those and then for the minor sixth, I will actually have a fret in between and you can also try some open string combinations. For instance, if I hit the G# here on the first fret of the third string, I can then hit the open E along with that and that's like taking this and extending it down and so we can do that and take it through some other shapes. So I will give a couple of examples that go through some possibilities with extending at to even lower strings.
So in this instance, let's stick with E mixolydian and you can get those exact positions from the tab of course. But it's also using some of the familiar shapes we have already looked at. One thing that I want to mention that we did here at the end is holding a B note on the second fret of the fifth string. Then I hammered on from the open third to the first fret. So that makes for sort of bluesy flat three to major three. So that was an interval of the sixth and then I stacked up another sixth on top of that by hitting the open E on top and then give it some finality with an E at the bottom.
So that's sort of a more challenging like that really extends that idea. So let's do one more lick. In this case would be in a different key. Let's switch to A dominant 7 in which we play a A mixolydian. Our last lick was an E mixolydian. So in order to do this we can just do some more lick to transpose it. So we take the A mixolydian scale and figure it out on each combinations of strings that we need. So we take our one and three and two and four
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